Angkor Wat

Built in the 12th century under King Suryavarman II (reigned 1113 to about 1150), first as a Hindu temple to Vishnu. Part of the Angkor World Heritage property (UNESCO site 668), which covers about 400 km² of former Khmer capitals. Covers 162.6 hectares and is ringed by a moat 190 m wide with a perimeter of more than 5 km. Unlike most Khmer temples it faces west, and its central tower stands 65 m above the ground. Angkor Pass prices on the official Angkor Enterprise site: US$37 for 1 day, US$62 for 3 days and US$72 for 7 days.

Angkor Wat is the best-known monument in the Angkor Archaeological Park, just outside Siem Reap in north-western Cambodia. A Khmer king raised it in the 12th century as a vast temple-mountain for the Hindu god Vishnu. Britannica describes it as the high point of Khmer architecture, and Guinness World Records lists it as the largest religious structure in the world. Its outline also appears on the Cambodian national flag.

The temple stands on a site of 162.6 hectares. A wide moat surrounds it, and you cross a long western causeway to reach three rising galleries that lead to a quincunx of five towers. The towers stand for Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hindu cosmology, and the moat stands for the ocean that surrounds it. The gallery walls carry almost 1,000 m² of bas-reliefs, including the famous Churning of the Sea of Milk.

Angkor Wat is not a museum piece. It gradually became a Theravada Buddhist temple and is still used for worship today. The Angkor Pass that gets you in is also valid for the rest of the park, including Angkor Thom, the Bayon and Ta Prohm, so most visitors plan Angkor Wat as part of a wider circuit.

When to go: Siem Reap has a dry season from November to April and a wet season from May to October. March to May are the hottest months, with April averaging highs of about 35.8 °C. If you want drier, more comfortable conditions, the cooler months at the start of the dry season are usually the most pleasant. Whatever the season, arriving when the gates open at 5:00 AM lets you see sunrise behind the towers and explore before the midday heat. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun rises directly over the central tower when seen from the western causeway.

Getting there: Angkor Wat lies just outside Siem Reap town, the base for visiting the Angkor Archaeological Park. Most international and domestic flights now use Siem Reap–Angkor International Airport (SAI), which opened on 16 October 2023. It is about 50 km east of the city and about 40 km from Angkor Wat, so plan on a road transfer. Before entering, you need an Angkor Pass. You can buy it online through the official Angkor Enterprise site or at the Angkor Ticket Office on Road 60, about 4 km from central Siem Reap, which is open daily from 5:30 AM to 5:00 PM. From town, visitors usually reach the temples by private car, tuk-tuk or a guided tour.

Angkor Wat was commissioned by Suryavarman II, who ruled the Khmer Empire from 1113 until about 1150. Sources give slightly different dates for the work. One common range is 1113 to 1150, and another account says building began in 1122 and finished around 1150. The king dedicated the temple to Vishnu rather than Shiva, who was the more usual choice for earlier Khmer state temples. Because it faces west, the direction linked with death, many scholars think it also served as the king's funerary temple. No inscription from the time records its original name. One suggested name is Vrah Vishnuloka, meaning the sacred dwelling of Vishnu.

Building the temple was a huge engineering job. Most visible surfaces use sandstone quarried at Phnom Kulen, about 40 km to the north-east. Laterite was used for the outer wall and for structural parts that would be hidden. Researchers think the stone came to the site by water. In 2011 they identified a canal of about 35 km that may have been used to move it. The finished plan is a model of Hindu cosmology: a moat for the cosmic ocean, enclosing walls for mountain ranges, and five towers for the peaks of Mount Meru.

Britannica notes that after the Cham sacked Angkor in 1177, Jayavarman VII moved the kingdom's religious focus towards Buddhism. Angkor Wat itself gradually became a Theravada Buddhist temple from the late 13th century. Even after the royal capital moved away from Angkor in the 15th century, Buddhist monks kept looking after the temple. That is one reason it is better preserved than many neighbouring monuments. Western visitors also left records. The Capuchin friar António da Madalena described the ruins in 1586, and the French naturalist Henri Mouhot made the temple widely known in Europe after his visit in 1860.

Systematic conservation began in 1908, when the École française d'Extrême-Orient set up the Conservation d'Angkor. The work stopped during the conflicts of the 1970s. It started again later, including a restoration programme by the Archaeological Survey of India from 1986 to 1992. UNESCO inscribed Angkor on the World Heritage List in 1992. In 1993 an international coordinating committee (ICC-Angkor) was formed, and in 1995 Cambodia created the APSARA National Authority to manage the site. Thanks to this work, Angkor was removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2004. Today the temple is both a heritage site and a national symbol, and a depiction of it has appeared on every version of the Cambodian flag since 1863.

1. UNESCO World Heritage Centre · Angkor ↗
2. Angkor Enterprise (official) · Available Tickets ↗
3. Angkor Enterprise (official) · FAQs ↗
4. Encyclopaedia Britannica · Angkor Wat ↗
5. Wikipedia · Angkor Wat ↗